Belgium criticised for corruption amongst deputies and judges

Thursday, 12 January 2017

Belgium received a bad report yesterday (Wednesday) in respect of prevention of corruption of deputies, judges and prosecutors by the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). The latter was created by the Council of Europe in 1999. This unfortunate report features in La Libre Belgique, De Tijd and De Standaard today (Thursday).

In a report published yesterday (Wednesday), GRECO concludes “that Belgium has neither satisfactorily implemented, or dealt with in a satisfactory way, any of the fifteen recommendations. Four recommendations were partially implemented and eleven were not implemented at all.”

GRECO was, for example, advocating “that rules for deputies be introduced around the management of relationships with lobbyists and other third parties, who are seeking to influence the parliamentary process.”